


Kiss Me, I'm Irish

by emmerrr



Series: Only Fools Rush In [18]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-04
Updated: 2017-10-04
Packaged: 2019-01-09 03:46:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12268218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emmerrr/pseuds/emmerrr
Summary: After a couple of years of dating, a fair few items of Ronan’s clothing had found their way into Adam’s wardrobe.Some of this was accidental; a t-shirt Ronan had forgotten in Adam’s dorm after a whirlwind visit, a pair of pyjama bottoms that had got mixed in with Adam’s own belongings when he packed his bags at the Barns, a beanie hat Adam had confused for his own after an early start when he wasn’t quite paying attention to what he was picking up.Others had been taken or left with clear intent.





	Kiss Me, I'm Irish

**Author's Note:**

> anonymous tumblr prompt: how about pynch where adam constantly steals ronan's clothes for barely existent reasons and has the most transparent excuses for it and everyone can tell they're ronan's clothes because they're too big on adam and fit ronan's punk aesthetic. bonus points if people at uni ask adam about it

After a couple of years of dating, a fair few items of Ronan’s clothing had found their way into Adam’s wardrobe.

Some of this was accidental; a t-shirt Ronan had forgotten in Adam’s dorm after a whirlwind visit, a pair of pyjama bottoms that had got mixed in with Adam’s own belongings when he packed his bags at the Barns, a beanie hat Adam had confused for his own after an early start when he wasn’t quite paying attention to what he was picking up.

Others had been taken or left with clear intent.

After the Christmas break of Adam’s freshman year, Adam wore one of Ronan’s hoodies whilst Ronan drove him to the airport, a quiet understanding passing between them that Ronan wasn’t going to be getting it back any time soon. Adam had also knowingly taken one of Ronan’s black sleeveless t-shirts, for no other reason than because it was just so quintessentially  _Ronan_ , and having it nearby offered Adam an indescribable level of comfort.

Something else now in Adam’s possession was a shamrock green t-shirt with  _Kiss Me, I’m Irish_  emblazoned on the front that Henry had given Ronan for his birthday. Ronan had seemed bemused by the gift but Adam got a real kick out of it, so much so that Ronan started actually wearing it, albeit only as a pyjama top. Never in the daytime, never in public. After one of Ronan’s visits, Adam had been lounging in his bed feeling mightily sorry for himself and missing Ronan so much he could barely stand it, when he had tucked his hand under his pillow and found a handful of material. He pulled out the green t-shirt and smiled. Ronan had left it there for him to find.

With the exception of the hoodie, most of these clothes that were now under Adam’s care never left his dorm room. They were pieces of home, of Ronan, and if Adam wore them it was for his own comfort only. They were clearly not his and he had his own clothes, anyway.

That wasn’t to say it had never happened. On one occasion Adam hadn’t planned ahead well enough and got caught out on laundry day, having to wear Ronan’s black sleeveless tee for an entire day of classes. It was a little big on him and it had been too hot for a jacket so he couldn’t really disguise it, and Adam’s classmates had definitely noticed the sudden change in style.

“You look very, uh, punk rock today,” one of them said.

“Laundry day,” Adam said with a sheepish shrug.

“It’s his boyfriend’s top,” Adam’s roommate supplied helpfully with a shit-eating grin on his face. He had, of course, met Ronan and correctly pegged it as Ronan’s aesthetic. (In other words, black.)

“Yes,” Adam said, a little touchily. “But it’s still laundry day.”

It wasn’t that Adam didn’t like wearing Ronan’s clothes, it was just that they drew attention in a way that his regular attire just didn’t, and he preferred to keep them just for himself. 

Just for bad days.

***

Finals week was a special kind of hell.

Adam was well prepared for his exams because he worked hard, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t stressful, particularly when everyone else was also feeling a heightened sense of last minute panic; it seeped its way into Adam, too. It all boiled down to the fact that Adam was on edge all week, and by the time the day of his final exam arrived he was running on fumes.

He got out of bed at his first alarm, not trusting himself to snooze it even once. There was a couple of hours before he had to make his way over to the room where his exam was taking place, so Adam reasoned he could go over his notes for forty-five minutes, hop in the shower, then grab something to eat. He’d be done in enough time to have a leisurely walk across campus, nice and refreshed and prepared.

Adam packed his little rucksack with everything he’d need for the exam and left it by the door for ease of grabbing when he was on his way out, then he sat down at his desk where his notes were still open.

The next thing he was aware of was his phone dinging with an incoming message, and with frightening clarity he realised he’d fallen asleep with his head on his desk. He scrabbled for his phone to see his message was from Ronan.

**\- you probably won’t see this till after, but good luck. you’ll ace it einstein. call me later**

The time at the top of his phone’s display read 9:46am, which meant Adam only had a little over ten minutes to make it for his exam’s strict 10am start time. If he was late, they wouldn’t let him take it.

“Shitshitshitshit,” Adam muttered furiously under his breath as he hurriedly pulled on his sneakers, grabbed his keys, his (thankfully) already packed bag, then ran from his room.

He made it to the right place with just under five minutes to spare, his classmates and other students taking exams at the same time milling around outside and looking over their own notes. The atmosphere was so quiet that almost everyone’s eyes zoned in on Adam immediately as he made his entrance from outside, doubled over with his hands on his knees and panting for breath.

He finally pulled up straight and took his bottle of water out of his bag, taking little sips until he regained his composure. When he had, he noticed that everyone was still staring at him.

“What?” he dared to ask. Surely they’d all seen someone running to an exam before; it was a regular occurrence. There was always one.

“Um,” one classmate ventured with a little smile, “overslept, did you?”

Adam shrugged. “Sort of. But I made it in time, so it’s all good.”

“I didn’t know you were Irish,” piped up another.

Adam tilted his head to the side, bewildered. “What? I’m not.”

“Adam, look down,” said the first, barely restrained amusement evident in her voice although she was clearly valiantly trying not to laugh, sensing Adam’s confusion.

Adam dropped his gaze and froze.

In his panic, Adam had forgotten that he was still wearing his PJs. Or to be more specific,  _Ronan’s_  PJs. His pyjama pants were the ones he’d accidentally packed at the beginning of the year,  _The Nightmare Before Christmas_  ones covered in a pattern of bones, bats and Jack Skellington’s head. To Adam’s utter mortification, the t-shirt was the bright green  _Kiss Me, I’m Irish_  one. Because of  _course_  it was, it had to be one so bold and ostentatious at a time like this in order to fully cement Adam’s humiliation.

Adam was luckily saved any further questions and stares and muffled giggles by the exam invigilator calling everyone inside, and although he gave Adam’s get-up a stern once-over and looked mightily disapproving, it wasn’t like there was anything in the rules saying Adam couldn’t take the exam in his pyjamas. It undoubtedly wasn’t the first time it had happened.

As he took his seat and tried to forget about anything other than his imminent exam, Adam reasoned that there really hadn’t been time for him to change even if he  _had_  realised what he was wearing in time. He pointedly ignored that fact that at least changing his t-shirt would have only taken mere seconds.

 _There will come a point in time_ , he said to himself,  _when I will think back on this day and laugh about it._

***

That point actually came quicker than Adam was expecting it to.

Once his exam was over, Adam hurried back to his room almost as fast as he’d ran out of it earlier. He put his bag down, fired up his laptop, then picked up his phone to text Ronan.

_\- I’m finished. Get on skype, I’m gonna call you in a sec_

Once his laptop was sufficiently loaded, Adam logged into Skype and saw that Ronan was already online. He hit video call, then stepped away from his desk to grab his water bottle before Ronan answered.

He hadn’t made it back to his desk when Ronan accepted the call.

“Parrish?” came Ronan’s voice, tinny through the speakers. “Have you been kidnapped?”

“No,” Adam called, taking a sip of his water. “No, I’m here, hang on.”

“How was the exam?”

“Oh, good I think. There was a couple of questions that were worded a little weird but I think I answered them okay. No sense worrying about it now, anyway.”

“That’s the spirit,” Ronan said. And then, frustrated, “Will you come and sit down already, I want to see you.”

Adam smiled. “Okay I will, but when you see what I had to wear to my exam I want you to really, really try not to enjoy it too much.”

There was quiet static on the other end for a moment before Ronan said, curiosity obviously piqued, “Alright, Parrish. I’ll really, really try.”

Adam braced himself, then stepped into the view of his web-cam.

Ronan said nothing for a moment, but his lips quirked in a smile that was betraying his need to laugh. “Why—” he cleared his throat, “—uh, why did you have to wear my PJs in public? To an  _exam?”_

“Because,” Adam said, sitting down in his desk chair, “I fell asleep and then didn’t wake up until you sent me that text, and I didn’t have time to change.”

“Adam  _Parrish_ ,” Ronan said, mock horrified. “I never thought I’d see the day where you’d nearly sleep through an exam.”

“Yeah, well. It didn’t happen, so it doesn’t matter. Instead I got to have one of my classmates saying he didn’t know I was Irish, then the exam invigilator shooting me death glares for the majority of the exam. It was just perfect.”

Ronan went quiet again, and looked like he was biting the inside of his cheek.

“You can laugh,” Adam said with a resigned sigh, and it broke the camel’s back.

Ronan burst into peals of wonderful, contagious laughter, the kind that had him struggling for breath, tears of utter mirth springing in the corners of his eyes that were visible even through the grainy picture on Adam’s laptop.

He couldn’t help but laugh, too.

Eventually, he got more words out. “Okay, okay, it’s not  _that_  funny,” he said.

“Ohhh, Parrish,” Ronan managed to say between helpless little laughs. “I love you, but it really,  _really_  is.”

**Author's Note:**

> I know, I know, Adam would never let himself cut it so fine before an all-important exam. indulge me. also, when I was in my first year at uni I accidentally turned my alarm off instead of pressing snooze, slept through an exam and had to re-take it in the summer. don’t be like me, kids.
> 
> cross posted on tumblr @emmerrr which I would directly link to but it's effort ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


End file.
